Disaster of Annual

Annual is a settlement in northeastern Morrocco about 120 km west of Melilla. There, during the Rif War or War of Melilla, on July 22, 1921, the Spanish army suffered a grave military defeat, known as the "Disaster of Annual", which led to a redefinition of Spanish colonial policy toward the Rif.

On July 22, 1921, after five days of siege, Spanish forces garrisoning the encampment of Annual under the command of general Manuel Fernández Silvestre after the contiguous position of Igueriben had fallen, were attacked and decimated by the Rifeño rebels under the command of Mohammed Ben Abd el-Krim El Jatabi, a former functionary of the Spanish administration in the Office of Indigenous Affairs in Melilla.

General Silvestre disappeared; his remains were never found. The few Spanish forces who escaped alive retreated some 80 km to the encampment of Monte Arruit, under the command of general Felipe Navarro y Ceballos-Escalera, but this position, too, was surrounded and cut off from supplies, because of which, looking at the conditions, general Dámaso Berenguer Fusté, Spanish High Commissioner in the protectorate, authorized surrender on August 9. Nonetheless, the Rifeños did not respect the conditions of surrender and entrered with blood and fire into the camp, killing many soldiers and taking general Navarro prisoner, along with some six hundred others. No one sent help from Melilla, some 40 km away; the few units that had to this point not surrendered and had maintained discipline were forced to retire under enemy fire to Melilla, whose own safety was much in doubt.

In total, during the fighting took the lives of between 10,000 and 20,000 Spanish soldiers and about 1,000 Rifeños.

The political crisis brought about by this disaster led Indalecio Prieto to say in the Juan Picasso González, which developed the report known as the Expediente Picasso, which, despite calling out numerous military mistakes, owing the the obstructive action of various ministers and judges did not go so far as to lay political responsiblility for the defeat, which popular opinion widely placed upon King Alfonso XIII, who according to several sources had encouraged Silvestre's irresponsible penetration of positions far from Melilla without having adequate defenses in his rear.

This crisis was one of the many that, over the course of the next decade, undermined the Spanish monarchy and led to the rise of the Second Spanish Republic.